Facebook friends network 'quadruples voting behaviour'

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19571053


Many users saw a message with pictures of friends who had voted; others saw a version without the friends

A banner message on Facebook showing users' friends who had voted drove a third of a million more voters to the poll booths, research shows.

Sixty-one million Facebook users in the US were shown the message, while 600,000 others simply saw a message imploring them to vote.

A report in Nature shows the message drove about 60,000 extra votes in the 2010 US Congressional elections.

But the message appearing on friends' pages drove a further 282,000 votes.